Orderville, Utah, is a smattering of modest homes in a narrow valley on the banks of southern Utah’s Virgin River. It feels both overgrown and empty: Thousands of people pass through here daily on their way between Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, yet few ever stop. On a perfect September day in the thick […]
Collectivists for Christ!
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Heated Conversations
Comments posted online in response to our Sept. 17 story “Fire fights“: There is really no question about Richard Hutto’s quote in this article, “the federal government is spending money thinning forests that have a long history of dense stands and severe fires.” But one should differentiate forest management at its interface with homes and […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Hages ride on
Actually, the Wayne Hage “taking” case is far from over (HCN, 9/17/2012, “One Sagebrush Rebellion flickers out — or does it?“). First, there are a number of significant findings by Judge Smith that were not overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Second, the Hages have filed a petition for rehearing […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Economic engineering in the New West
The other night, my local irrigation ditch company held a meeting at the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). I sat down on folding chairs with about 50 of my neighbors to hear from our elected board about by-law changes and progress on a federally-funded project to put much of our unlined ditch — hand dug […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
As goes Nevada, so goes the nation?
Updated 10/30/12 Twenty-seven days before the general election, northern Nevada state Sen. Greg Brower pleaded a case before a roomful of ardent conservatives that sounded suspiciously moderate. “We can’t survive without any taxes and regulation,” the Washoe County Republican told a women’s club at the Nugget Hotel in Sparks. He acknowledged that he considers power-sharing […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
2012 Western ballot initiatives
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline 2012 Western ballot initiatives.
Posted inGoat
Binders full of newspaper endorsements
In the age of political Internet memes, which both entertain and influence voters, how important is a newspaper endorsement? The answer depends on who you ask. To voters, a newspaper endorsement may have little bearing on their vote, as NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflick reported. In interviews, a dozen voters suggested they put little to […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Inside the orchard: A conversation with novelist Amanda Coplin
Amanda Coplin spent the first years of her life in Wenatchee, Wash., the self-proclaimed “Apple Capital of the World,” and was indelibly shaped by its rolling acres of fruit trees, and by her frequent visits to the apple and apricot orchard owned by her grandparents. Those sights and smells are powerfully evoked in her debut […]
Posted inWotr
Heading out of fall’s impending darkness
One day in October every year, I leave my home valley and make a pilgrimage up into Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. I am not seeking enlightenment, exactly. I am seeking simply light. My birthday falls on Oct. 10, long enough past the fall equinox that the ever-growing darkness of autumn can no longer be denied. Every […]
Posted inGoat
Utah tar sands project gets key go ahead
One Canadian company’s plan to extract oil from Utah’s tar sands just took a big step forward. In 2005, U.S. Oil Sands, a small Canadian company already active in Alberta, proposed a project to squeeze oil out of tar sands on Utah’s Tavaputs Plateau On Wednesday, the Utah Water Quality Board voted 9-2 to uphold […]
Posted inGoat
Amphibian alterations
Parasites have always filled me with fear. I still experience the occasional bout of night terrors when images of Guinea Worms wriggling out of weeping lesions in my flesh flicker across my dream state subconscious. Over the past few days, while working on a piece for the next issue of High Country News, I’ve become […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Already gone: a profile of Muscogee (Creek) poet Joy Harjo
The author of She Had Some Horses and In Mad Love and War discusses her new memoir, Crazy Brave.
Posted inWotr
A grisly death in Alaska
A man from San Diego was killed by a grizzly bear recently, on the Toklat River in Alaska on the same overcast day that my son and I played in the woods outside of our cabin, 30 miles away. The Toklat River bar is a place my family has often hiked, saturated in Denali’s scenery. […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Snakes and guns
WYOMING AND UTAH Gun advocates keep turning up pesky impediments to their right to use guns any way they want, and when they do, they usually contact their state legislators and demand action. So recently, a Wyoming legislative panel endorsed a proposed bill that would permit silencers to be used while hunting any wildlife in […]
Posted inGoat
This rich Republican Mormon spreads the wealth
He’s a rich, conservative Republican businessman, and the scion of a powerful Mormon family. And four years into a devastating economic crisis, he has come to Washington, D.C., amid cries to balance the budget, to offer a solution. Mitt Romney? Nope. It’s Marriner S. Eccles. The year was 1933, and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee […]
Posted inGoat
Environment 2012
Environmental issues have barely registered a blip on political radar screens this campaign season. Sure, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had a notable bickering match about drilling on public lands in their town hall debate. But it devolved into a game of one-upmanship as to who would drill more. Yes, Obama continues to promote clean […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Three Nevada fiction writers make their debut
This year, three accomplished and innovative fiction debuts by young Nevada-raised writers will hit the bookstores, including two novels –– Tupelo Hassman’s Girlchild and Ben Rogers’ The Flamer (reviewed in HCN on Aug. 6) –– and a short story collection, Claire Vaye Watkins’ Battleborn. Girlchild tells the story of Rory Dawn Hendrix, who at the […]
Posted inGoat
Glimpses of moderation this election season
Like a lot of you, I’m feeling depressed in the runup to the November 6 elections. The relentless attack ads demonizing every candidate around the West, and our further fragmentation into hostile camps — six political parties qualified for Wyoming’s ballot alone, a new record for that state, for instance — I’m beginning to think […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Student essay: The view from the East
Editor’s note: This is the winning essay from our annual student essay contest. This year’s theme was “How I Became a Westerner.” Learn more about student subscription offers here. It took going East for me to understand my home in the West. Like the narrator of Steinbeck’s East of Eden, my thoughts were always drawn […]
Posted inGoat
Is the future of Western water in jeopardy?
Updated 10/22/2012, 12:14 p.m., MDT “Supreme Court decision could lead to ‘water anarchy’ in the West““U.S. on the verge of water anarchy““Utah’s water future in court”“Ruling key to Colorado water future““Upcoming ruling key to New Mexico’s water future“ These headlines, splashed across major Western newspapers in recent weeks, and in the influential website Politico and […]